Method and apparatus for downlink multiuser MIMO transmission in a wireless network

ABSTRACT

A base station transmits to a number of relay stations in a wireless network using a beamforming matrix. The beamforming matrix is generated by first obtaining a column vector from a beamforming matrix associated with each of the relay stations. An intermediate matrix is then generated using these column vectors. A zero-forcing procedure is then utilized to process the intermediate network to generate the final beamforming matrix.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention relates generally to wireless communications and, more particularly, to techniques for performing downlink multiuser multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) transmission in a wireless network.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Many modern broadband wireless access systems (e.g., WiMAX) use space-time signal processing that exploits multiple antennas at the transmitting (TX) and receiving (RX) ends of the communication link. Future systems (e.g., WiMAX II) are expected to further improve performance by applying a number of advanced techniques like multi-user (MU) multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) transmission. There is a need for beamforming techniques that may be used in the downlink of a multi-user MIMO network.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a wireless network arrangement that may incorporate features of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a method for generating and using a beamforming matrix W for use in transmitting data signals to multiple relay stations in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating an example base station in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that show, by way of illustration, specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced. These embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention. In the drawings, like numerals refer to the same or similar functionality throughout the several views.

The present invention relates to techniques and structures for performing beamforming in the downlink from a base station to a number of relay stations (or other wireless device) in a wireless network that uses multi-user, multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO). The techniques and structures of the present invention are most beneficial when the relay stations each have multiple antennas, but only a single data stream is being transmitted to each relay station. This scenario is assumed to be very common in, for example, practical WiMAX implementations. One of the situations that is among the most advantageous for the proposed techniques is the stationary scenario where a base station equipped with four antennas (which is typical for a base station) is sending two spatial streams to two relay stations (one spatial stream per relay), where each relay is equipped with two antennas (which is typical for a relay station). In such system, it is possible to support four spatial streams, with two spatial streams being transmitted to each relay station. However, this mode will not typically be effective since the channel from the base station to the relay station will usually have a strong Line-of-Sight (LOS) path and, therefore, the system will have one strong first spatial channel and one weak second spatial channel. So the system configuration for the developed techniques (i.e., where MU-MIMO systems use fewer spatial streams than they are capable of supporting) is practical and is an important usage case especially for future broadband wireless access systems with relays (e.g., WiMAX II). The techniques and structures of the present invention are capable of achieving substantial increases in system throughput by employing multiplexing for transmission of data from the base station to the relays and using simultaneous transmission to send data from the relays to the multiple users.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a wireless network arrangement 10 that may incorporate features of the present invention. As illustrated, the network arrangement 10 may include: a base station 12 and two or more relay stations 14, 16. During network operation, two-way wireless communication between the base station 12 and the relay stations 14, 16 will occur. The communication from the base station 12 to the relay stations 14, 16 is known as downlink communication and the communication from the relay stations 14, 16 to the base station 12 is known as uplink communication. As shown in the embodiment of FIG. 1, the base station 12 and the relay stations 14, 16 each have multiple antennas. That is, the base station 12 has at least 4 antennas 18 and the relay stations 14, 16 have two antennas 20, 22 each. Because the relay stations 14, 16 have two antennas each, the base station 12 will be able to transmit two spatial streams to each of the relays 14, 16. However, as described above, the channel from the base station to a relay station will usually have a strong LOS path, which typically results in one strong first spatial channel and one weak second spatial channel. Therefore, in at least one implementation of the invention, the number of spatial streams that is used to transmit to each of the relay stations 14, 16 will be less than the total number of possible spatial streams.

Referring to FIG. 1, the base station 12 includes a transmit beamformer 24 to provide beamforming for signals to be transmitted to the relay stations 14, 16. A plurality of symbols s=[s₁, . . . , s_(K)] are delivered to an input of the beamformer 24 and the beamformer 24 processes these symbols using a beamforming matrix W before the symbols are transmitted from the antennas 18. The beamformer processing will cause signals to be transmitted in appropriately directed spatial streams to the respective relay stations 14, 16. Once received by the relay stations 14, 16, the signals may be processed using receiver signal processing 26, 28 to estimate corresponding data symbol ŝ₁-ŝ_(K) within each of the relay stations 14, 16. The base station 12 and the relay stations 14, 16 may each include one or more digital processing devices for performing communications related functions. These digital processing devices may include, for example, a general purpose microprocessor, a digital signal processor (DSP), a reduced instruction set computer (RISC), a complex instruction set computer (CISC), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a microcontroller, and/or others, including combinations of the above.

In one aspect of the present invention, techniques are provided for generating a beamforming matrix that may be used within a beamformer, such as the beamformer 24 of FIG. 1, to transmit data signals to multiple relay stations in a wireless network. In various implementations, the techniques may be used to achieve a substantial increase in throughput by employing multiplexing for transmission of data from a base station to multiple relays and by using simultaneous transmission to send data from the relays to multiple users. In the discussion that follows, a beamforming matrix generation technique will be discussed for the general case of a single base station having M antennas (M>1) transmitting to K different relay stations/user stations that each have multiple receive antennas. The number of receive antennas within each relay station will be designated N_(k) and the total number of receive antennas within the K relay stations will be N=N₁+N₂+ . . . +N_(K). It is assumed for this description that the base station will send one spatial data stream to each relay station resulting in K parallel spatial data streams being transmitted (represented herein by the vector s=[s₁, . . . , s_(K)]). The signal received by the kth relay station may be expressed as: y _(k) =H _(k) ·W·s+n _(k) where H_(k) is the N_(k)×M channel matrix between the base station and the kth relay station; n_(k) is the additive white Gaussian noise vector at the kth relay station receive antennas with power σ² and correlation E[n_(k)·n_(k) ^(H)]=σ²I; and W is the transmit beamforming matrix. The transmit beamforming matrix W will consist of individual precoder vectors corresponding to the K relay stations (i.e., W=[w₁, . . . , w_(K)]). The overall channel matrix between the base station and the K relay stations can be expressed as H^(H)=[H₁ ^(H), H₂ ^(H), . . . , H_(K) ^(H)], where H^(H) is the conjugate transpose of the matrix H.

To generate the transmit beamforming matrix W, a singular value decomposition (SVD) is first performed for the channel matrix associated with each of the K relay stations. This may be expressed as follows:

$\quad\left\{ \begin{matrix} {{{svd}\left( H_{1} \right)} = {U_{1}\Lambda_{1}V_{1}^{H}}} \\ \vdots \\ {{{svd}\left( H_{K} \right)} = {U_{K}\Lambda_{K}V_{K}^{H}}} \end{matrix} \right.$ The SVD calculation may be done at the base station or at the individual relay stations. If done at the base station, each of the relay stations will have to feed back the channel matrix H_(k) to the base station. If done at the relay stations, each of the relay stations will only have to feed back the largest column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of the beamforming matrix V_(k) to the base station. In one possible scenario, the proposed technique will be used to perform spatial multiplexing for relay stations that are stationary and have stationary propagation channel characteristics. In such a case, it can be assumed that the feedback speed will not limit practical applications of the proposed technique. Therefore, the feedback information may be sent at a low speed in these circumstances.

After the SVD calculations have been completed and the base station has the column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ (corresponding to the maximum singular value) of each beamforming matrix V_(k), the intermediate beamforming matrix W_(SVD) may be constructed as follows: W _(SVD) =[v ₁ ⁽¹⁾ ,v ₂ ⁽²⁾ , . . . , v _(K) ⁽¹⁾]. The vectors v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ represent the well-known SVD transmit beamforming vectors that provide independent maximization of the received signal power for each relay station. However, if the matrix W_(SVD) is directly applied as a transmit beamforming matrix, then severe interference may occur between transmissions to the different relay stations. To reduce the interference caused by the transmit beamforming, a zero-forcing procedure is applied to the beamforming matrix W_(SVD) as follows: W ₀ =W _(SVD)(W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹; and W _(ZF-SVD) =W ₀/trace(W ₀ ^(H) W ₀). where trace (A) is the trace of matrix A, which is the sum of the elements on the main diagonal of the matrix (i.e., the diagonal from the upper left to the lower right). The matrix W_(ZF-SVD) may then be used as the transmit beamforming matrix of the base station.

In essence, the proposed solution first finds the transmit directions for every relay station independently to maximize the received signal power without taking into account the mutual interference between devices. Then, the zero-forcing operation is applied to the transmit vectors to change them from vectors that result in maximum power transmission to vectors that reduce mutual interference. The zero-forcing operation, however, guarantees a zero interference level along the vector of maximum power transmission for each relay station. As a result, each relay station will typically have a non-zero interference level at its receive antennas, but it will be capable of suppressing this interference using an appropriate receiver signal processing algorithm (e.g., the minimum mean square error (MMSE) algorithm). The present technique therefore reaches a compromise between interference level and power transfer level in the downlink of a MIMO network which, effectively, is a compromise between interference level and thermal noise level.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a method 30 for generating and using a beamforming matrix W for use in transmitting data signals to multiple relay stations in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The method 30 may be implemented within, for example, the wireless network arrangement of FIG. 1 to transmit data signals from the base station 12 to the relay stations 14, 16. Other applications also exist. First, a propagation channel H_(k) between a wireless base station and each of a plurality of wireless relay stations is measured (block 32). Typically, the channel matrix H_(k) for each relay station will be generated within the relay station. For each relay station k, a singular value decomposition (SVD) of H_(k) is calculated to generate a corresponding beamforming matrix V_(k) (block 34). A first column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ is then extracted from each of the beamforming matrices V_(k). In one approach, the SVD of each H_(k) is calculated within the corresponding relay station. In this scenario, each relay station will have to extract v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ from the beamforming matrix V_(k) and transmit it to the base station for further processing. In another approach, each of the relay stations may transmit its entire channel matrix H_(k) to the base station and the base station performs the SVD. The base station then extracts the column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾.

An intermediate matrix W_(SVD) is next constructed from the extracted vectors v₁ ⁽¹⁾, . . . , v_(K) ⁽¹⁾ (block 36). The matrix W_(SVD) may have the form: W _(SVD) =[v ₁ ⁽¹⁾ , . . . , v _(K) ⁽¹⁾]

After the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) has been generated, zero-forcing is used to calculate the beamforming matrix W₀. This calculation may be expressed as follows: W ₀ =W _(SVD)(W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹ where W is the beamforming matrix that will be applied by the transmitted within the base station and X^(H) is the conjugate transpose of matrix X. After the beamforming matrix W has been generated, it may be applied at the base station to transmit data to the plurality of wireless relay stations (block 40). When each of the relay stations receives its intended signal, it will proceed to process the signal to estimate the corresponding data. Any of a number of different multi-antenna signal processing algorithms may be used in each relay station. In at least one embodiment, for example, minimum mean square error (MMSE) processing is utilized in the receivers of the relay stations.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating an example base station 50 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. As shown, the base station 50 includes: a beamformer 52, a data collection unit 54, a singular value decomposition (SVD) unit 56, an intermediate matrix assembler 58, and a zero-forcing filer 60. The configuration of FIG. 3 may be used, for example, to generate a new beamforming matrix for the beamformer 52. The beamformer 52 is coupled to a number of antennas 62 to facilitate the transmission of signals into a wireless channel. Any type of antennas may be used, including, for example, a dipole, a patch, a helical antenna, and/or others. The data collector 54 is operative for collecting data from remote multi-antenna wireless devices to which the base station 50 is communicating. The intermediate matrix assembler 58 is operative for assembling an intermediate matrix W_(SVD) using individual beamformer column vectors v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ collected for the remote wireless devices. The zero-forcing filter 60 uses zero-forcing to act upon the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to generate a new beamforming matrix to be used by the beamformer 52.

As described previously, the SVD operations may be performed within the remote wireless devices (e.g., relay stations, etc.) or they may be performed within the base station 50. If the base station 50 is to perform the SVD operations, then the data collection unit 54 will collect channel estimates H_(k) (or information from which the channel estimates can be derived) from the remote wireless devices. The channel estimates will typically be generated within the remote wireless devices using training sequences received from the base station 50. Once one or more of the channel estimates have been received by the data collection unit 54, the data collection unit 54 will have each estimate processed by the SVD unit 56 to generate a beamforming matrix for the corresponding remote wireless device. The data collection unit 54 will then extract the largest column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of the beamforming matrix associated with each of the remote wireless devices. The intermediate matrix assembler 58 will then assemble the column vectors v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ into the intermediate matrix W_(SVD). The zero-forcing filter 60 will then operate upon the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to calculate the transmit beamforming matrix W, in the manner described previously, and feed the matrix W to the beamformer 52. Beamformed data may then be transmitted to the remote wireless devices from the base station 50.

If the remote wireless devices are to perform the SVD operations, then each of these devices will need to have and SVD unit of their own. The devices will each independently generate a channel estimate describing the wireless channel between the base station 50 and the device. Each wireless device will then calculate an SVD of the channel estimate to generate a beamforming matrix. The wireless devices will then each extract the largest column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ from the corresponding beamforming matrix and transmit the column vector to the base station 50. The data collection unit 54 within the base station 50 will collect these column vectors. The intermediate matrix assembler 58 will then assemble the intermediate matrix using the collected column vectors v_(k) ⁽¹⁾. As before, the zero-forcing filter 60 will then operate upon the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to calculate the transmit beamforming matrix W, in the manner described previously, and feed the matrix W to the beamformer 52. Beamformed data may then be transmitted to the remote wireless devices from the base station 50.

Note that the above description of embodiments of the invention are made in the context of a frequency non-selective propagation channel. For a frequency selective propagation channel, such as a multicarrier channel, the proposed techniques should be appropriately extended. For example, for OFDM or OFDMA based systems, the described technique of generating the transmit antenna beamforming matrix W_(ZF-SVD) would have to be performed for each subcarrier having data to be transmitted.

The techniques and structures of the present invention may be implemented in any of a variety of different forms. For example, features of the invention may be embodied within laptop, palmtop, desktop, and tablet computers having wireless capability; personal digital assistants (PDAs) having wireless capability; cellular telephones and other handheld wireless communicators; pagers; satellite communicators; cameras having wireless capability; audio/video devices having wireless capability; network interface cards (NICs) and other network interface structures; base stations; wireless access points; integrated circuits; as instructions and/or data structures stored on machine readable media; and/or in other formats. Examples of different types of machine readable media that may be used include floppy diskettes, hard disks, optical disks, compact disc read only memories (CD-ROMs), digital video disks (DVDs), Blu-ray disks, magneto-optical disks, read only memories (ROMs), random access memories (RAMs), erasable programmable ROMs (EPROMs), electrically erasable programmable ROMs (EEPROMs), magnetic or optical cards, flash memory, and/or other types of media suitable for storing electronic instructions or data. Hardware, software, firmware, and hybrid implementations may be used.

In the foregoing detailed description, various features of the invention are grouped together in one or more individual embodiments for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed invention requires more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspects may lie in less than all features of each disclosed embodiment.

Although the present invention has been described in conjunction with certain embodiments, it is to be understood that modifications and variations may be resorted to without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as those skilled in the art readily understand. Such modifications and variations are considered to be within the purview and scope of the invention and the appended claims. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer implemented method comprising: at a multi-antenna base station that is communicating with K multi-antenna relay stations where K is an integer greater than 1, obtaining a column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of a beamforming matrix associated with each of said K multi-antenna relay stations; assembling an intermediate matrix W_(SVD) using said column vectors; using zero-forcing on said intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to calculate a transmit beamforming matrix W for use by said multi-antenna base station to transmit data to said K relay stations, wherein the transmit beaming matrix W includes using zero-forcing to calculate: W ₀ =W _(SVD)(W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹, and W _(ZF-SVD) =W ₀/trace(W ₀ ^(H) W ₀), wherein H is a conjugate transpose of the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) and trace is the trace of (W₀ ^(H)W₀); and transmitting data from said multi-antenna base station to said K relay stations using said transmit beamforming matrix W, wherein the relay stations are stationary and have stationary propagation channels.
 2. The method of claim 1 wherein: assembling an intermediate matrix W_(SVD) using said column vectors includes assembling a matrix W_(SVD)=[v₁ ⁽¹⁾, . . . , v_(K) ⁽¹⁾].
 3. The method of claim 1 wherein: using zero-forcing on said intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to calculate said transmit beamforming matrix W includes using zero-forcing to calculate: W=W _(SVD)(W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹.
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein: obtaining a column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of a beamforming matrix associated with each relay station within said K multi-antenna relay stations includes receiving a column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾ from a first relay station, wherein said first relay station generated a channel matrix for a channel between said base station and said first relay station, performed a singular value decomposition (SVD) on the channel matrix to generate a beamforming matrix, and extracted said column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾ from said beamforming matrix before transmitting said column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾ to said base station.
 5. The method of claim 1 wherein: obtaining a column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of a beamforming matrix associated with each relay station within said K multi-antenna relay stations includes receiving at said base station, from a first relay station, a channel matrix for a channel between said base station and said first relay station, performing a singular value decomposition (SVD) on said channel matrix at said base station to generate a beamforming matrix, and extracting a column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾ from said beamforming matrix.
 6. An apparatus comprising: a beamformer to precode data to be transmitted from multiple antennas to K remote relay stations using a beamforming matrix W, where K is an integer greater than 1; a data collection unit to collect a largest column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of a beamforming matrix associated with each of said K remote relay stations; an intermediate matrix assembler to assemble an intermediate matrix W_(SVD) using said largest column vectors v_(k) ⁽¹⁾; and a zero-forcing filter to perform zero-forcing on said intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to generate a transmit beamforming matrix W for use by the beamformer, wherein the zero-forcing filter performs zero-forcing on the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) using: W ₀ =W _(SVD)(W _(SVD)(W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹, and W _(ZF-SVD) =W ₀/trace(W ₀ ^(H) W ₀), wherein H is a conjugate transpose of the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) and trace is the trace of (W₀ ^(H)W₀).
 7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein said intermediate matrix assembler assembles said intermediate matrix as: W _(SVD) =[V ₁ ⁽¹⁾ , . . . , v _(K) ⁽¹⁾].
 8. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein said zero-forcing filter performs zero-forcing on said intermediate matrix W_(SVD) as follows: W=W _(SVD)(W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹.
 9. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein: said data collection unit is configured to receive said largest column vectors v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ directly from said K remote relay stations.
 10. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein: said data collection unit is configured to receive a channel estimate from each of said K remote relay stations, each channel estimate being for a channel between said apparatus and a corresponding remote relay station, wherein said data collection unit is configured to use a singular value decomposition (SVD) unit to perform a SVD on each received channel estimate to generate a beamforming matrix and extract a largest column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of said beamforming matrix.
 11. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computing platform, operate to: obtain a column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of a beamforming matrix associated with each of K multi-antenna relay stations, where K is an integer greater than 1; assemble an intermediate matrix W_(SVD) using said column vectors; use zero-forcing on said intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to calculate a transmit beamforming matrix W for use by said multi-antenna base station to transmit data to said K multi-antenna wireless, wherein the transmit beaming matrix W includes using zero-forcing to calculate: W ₀ =W _(SVD)(W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹, and W _(ZF-SVD) =W ₀/trace(W ₀ ^(H) W ₀), wherein H is a conjugate transpose of the intermediate matrix W_(SVD) and trace is the trace of (W₀ ^(H)W₀); and transmit data to said K multi-antenna relay stations using said transmit beamforming matrix W, wherein the relay stations are stationary and have propagation channels.
 12. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11, wherein: said operation to assemble an intermediate matrix W_(svp) using said column vectors includes an operation to assemble a matrix W_(SVD)=[V₁ ⁽¹⁾, . . . , V_(K) ⁽¹⁾].
 13. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11, wherein: said operation to use zero-forcing on said intermediate matrix W_(SVD) to calculate said transmit beamforming matrix W includes an operation to use zero-forcing to calculate: W=W _(SVD)((W _(SVD) ^(H) W _(SVD))⁻¹.
 14. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11, wherein: said operation to obtain a column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of a beamforming matrix associated with each of K multi-antenna relay stations includes an operation to receive a column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾ from a first relay station of said K multi-antenna relay stations, wherein said first relay station had generated a channel matrix for a wireless channel associated with said first relay station, performed a singular value decomposition (SVD) on said channel matrix to generate a beamforming matrix, and extracted said column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾ from said beamforming matrix before transmitting said column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾.
 15. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11, wherein: said operation to obtain a column vector v_(k) ⁽¹⁾ of a beamforming matrix associated with each of K multi-antenna relay stations includes an operation to receive, from a first relay station of said K multi-antenna relay stations, a channel matrix for a channel associated with said first relay station, an operation to perform a singular value decomposition (SVD) on said channel matrix to generate a beamforming matrix, and an operation to extract a column vector v₁ ⁽¹⁾ from said beamforming matrix. 